About Living
I think I’m dying
Now that I’ve found the secret to living
The chiming reverberations
Of an old, black,
dusty piano
Travel from trembling
strings
Struck by hammers
Struck by fingers
Struck by a heart
Aching with joy or
sadness
And moved to speak
Using notes sad and
blue
Or peaceful and green
Or bright and yellow
Or raging and red
Because she wore a
dress
Of blue, green, yellow
and red
That day at the beach
with white sand
And deckchairs,
sunbathers with tanned skin and half-conquered sandcastles
Where she said she
loved him – but not enough
Or he said he loved
her – but not enough
And they should have
been happy but weren’t
And each wondered why
it was so hard to be happy
In a world so full of
people wanting to be happy
The grainy feeling of
hot sand between his toes
As they curled inward
Away from the anger
and disappointment
On that windy evening when
he was twelve
And got sand in his
eyes while reading Romeo and Juliet
On a patio by a dusty
Arabian street side
Summer’s cool breath
creeping up his skin
In a trail of
goosebumps and erect hairs
When he decided that
dying for love was beautiful
Or that there was no
beauty in loving enough to die
And set his heart
(which was later to ache)
Towards finding a love
true enough to die for
Or a truth beyond
love, worth living for
Ignorant to the fact
that his heart commanded him and not he, his heart –
The evening he had
haddock for dinner
It smelled fishy but
he didn’t know what it was
How could he when he
had only just learned to walk
He stared at it,
trying to find the words
Which best described
the stinging sensation at the ridge of his nose
Whenever he went near
and inhaled deeply
But his vocabulary was
as limited as his mobility
So, he stretched a
fidgety finger
Attached to a fidgety
forearm
And the fidgety frame
Of a fidgety infant
Scooped a dollop and
put it in his mouth
And learned that he
didn’t enjoy the taste of cat faeces
Not unlike the taste
on his tongue
The first time he breathed
– heard, saw, touched and smelled
Untainted by the
membrane of his mother’s womb –
And cried because he
felt everything at once and it was all too much
When all he ate or
drank was the rich milk of his mother’s breast
Of which he never grew
tired
Because he didn’t know
there was anything else to savour
And came to it with
fresh enthusiasm
Each time it was
presented to him
As his sole reason for
and means to living
Hearing, seeing,
touching, smelling and tasting
All too great an
adventure to decline
Nowadays, I kill my adventures before they’ve begun
For being too stupid, too dangerous or too childish
I find my living shrinking
To fewer and less momentous events
And my dying, swelling
With the emptiness of all the things I’ve learned not to do
